Shopping Bots
What is a shopping bot?
A “shopping bot” is an electronic price comparison service. Shopping bots are a convenient, rapid way to compare prices between multiple electronic vendors, and in some cases, traditional retail vendors. In response to a query, such as an ISBN#, title, or brand/product description, a shopping bot will return a sorted list of prices and product descriptions, sometimes including comparative shipping costs.
Are shopping bots personal agents?
Software agents include some level of “artificial intelligence” or decision-refinement algorithms that evolve a solution from a simple query and take action on the query. Current shopping bots are more akin to metasearch engines. They do not fulfill a request, but merely return information in response to a query. At present, shopping bots have not reached the point where they are software agents, but everyone expects shopping bots to evolve into personal software agents as the technology improves. Most already include algorithms that “learn” from prior queries in order to return more useful information.
Where do shopping bots reside?
Most popular shopping bots are resident on the web, but some are programs that are downloaded by the user and are resident on the local hard drive. The downloaded programs operate in a similar manner to the web-based interfaces, but with a different revenue model. Web-based shopping bots generate revenues through a combination of advertising and commissions on sales linked through the shopping bot. User resident programs generally can be downloaded as a shareware version with reduced functionality, or purchased as full-function software. Because user-resident shopping bots do not usually r...
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...ng bots. The comprehensive nature and specificity of the site make it an extremely valuable resource.
Conclusions
Shopping bots are personal agents in embryo, and are currently an exciting development made possible by web-based e-commerce. The functionality of shopping bots is changing rapidly in what is becoming an enormous market opportunity. The war for portals has subsided, and the next battle will be between the search services, including shopping bots, and the actual vendors. Both are competing for the loyalty of the web-savvy consumer. As shopping bots improve, and begin to function more like personal agents and less like search services, they will become an indispensable tool of modern life in the age of e-commerce. One need only look at the revenues of “yellow pages” companies to understand the enormous potential inherent in shopping bots.
Amazon.com operates in the Online Retail Industry. The sector is one of the fastest growing globally and is outperforming the ordinary retail marketplace. It was created after 1995 and it was only the Internet that made it possible for such an industry not only to be established but to become one of the most flourishing sectors in the business environment. What is interesting is that Amazon.com, together with eBay is the pioneer in the field. Both companies were launched in 1995 and are still extremely successful. The creation of e-mail in 1996 had a huge impact on the development of online retail by introducing a fast and easy way to communicate with customers. For this two-year period Internet usage doubled annually, thus, allowing for the expansion of the industry. Google is launched a year later, in 1998, only to become the most used search engine in the world and an essential partner for the online retailers by helping them tailor their websites to customer’s personal preferences and by advertising. After that, more and more people see the opportunity in the growing industry and enter it. By 2001 there are more than 513 million Internet users globally, which calls for action in terms of creating regulations and laws to protect the users and personal property. In 2003, Apple launches iTunes, and provides a platform for low-cost digital downloads. Another major change is the appearance of social media from 2004, which is one of the biggest influencer on the state of the industry. With the launch of iPhone in 2007, this trend strengthens as people get to enjoy the Internet anywhere they want to. From then on, technological advancements have made it extremely easy and fun to shop online, making it ...
eBay is an online platform which works as market place. On eBay, people can do both selling and buy at the same time. Also, there are many variations of item that can be sold and buy as well. The way eBay works is letting users do a C2C business model on their platform. They provide features that ease the users to do trading activities. Some powerful features of eBay are secure payment gateway, product listing and categories, search engines, bid and buy now method, and also user’s reputation. To experience the reliability of eBay from seller perspective, an experiment have been done. The experiment is regarding of how a user selling products in eBay, including the strategy to selling it f...
Krishnamurthy, S. (2004). A comparative analysis of eBay and Amazon [PDF file]. Retrieved from http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep/d/amazonebay.pdf
In today’s fast paced technology, search engines have become vastly popular use for people’s daily routines. A search engine is an information retrieval system that allows someone to search the...
Worldwide, business decision makers and influencers of trillions of dollars of commerce are migrating to a digital buying experience improving the precision, speed and convenience of their choices. They are looking for providers who understand and service their digital buying approach. For the next decade, not only will more buyers go digital, their digital needs will escalate not only as buyers but as customers. Laggard providers will certainly lose business as these buyers migrate to more digitization. When you visit the websites of most providers, it’s easy to see they have not given careful thought to this emerging and dominant buyer approach.
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To save some time shopping in market, people prefer things come at their door steps. That’s is why online shopping trend is getting at full throttle. In spite going to market and finding the right thing, people are now Googling a few queries and they get the right thing in right price, which in return gives them good thing at better price and hours they would go shopping are now saved. Figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in 2007, show that six out of ten British adults use the internet to buy products such as food, clothing, music or holidays [1]. But that was in 2007, figures have grown much more than that.
There has been a surprising change in society, which computer engineering has brought about . The Internet in particular is changing every activity of our daily lives. Today just about every advertisement on television, radio and in print carries a web address. It is not unusual for consumers to research a purchase on the Internet before buying. Websites offer thousands of pages of detailed information. Chat rooms and news groups attract many people with opinions t...
Internet commerce is one of the fastest growing industries today. With the wide range of capabilities the web has it make it easier and cost efficient for businesses to make transactions with other businesses. One factor that allows businesses to find each other is search engines. Search engines are part of the reason the web is growing so rapidly.
The Information revolution is changing our daily lives. With the rapid development of computers and the internet, online commerce has become quite common and plays an important role in the modern world. Online business has been booming in recent years. US online retail sales rose an average of 11% in the first three months of 2009 (“US Online Sales Up,” 2009). The growth of online sales may be due to the growing number of consumers who shop online.
Many people have a compulsive shopping disorder. However, some person’s compulsive shopping disorder effects their daily lives.
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E-commerce is about two decades old, yet due to its fascinating dimensions, it remains a challenging area for researchers and professionals.
The past several years have marked a time which is comparable to the coming of television and the radio. The Internet has grown from a simple way to send messages to and from two different computers with different operating systems, known as the beginning of E-Mail, to a way to sell and buy products just like in the tangible world. This article explains that the Internet or Web must be reckoned in dog years, because the pace of change is so fast that one year on the Internet is like seven years in any other medium. Fifteen million households connected to the "Net" can be a large market for any business willing and ready to scoop it up. By the year 2000, the projection is that North America will have 38 million online households, one third of all households.
In the 1990's, the Internet has virtually changed the lifestyle of the consumer. One-to-one marketing and advertising has become very popular on the Internet, and the personal service it gives a consumer can save him time and effort. A growing nu mber of people, including children, are using digital networks for all kinds of personal transactions, exposing much more of themselves, via E-mail or chat-lines or even Web sites, by completing forms filled with personal data in order to get the service they need. For example, the DoubleClick Netowrk, an ad agency, is very popular with consumers, especially the young. If a consumer clicks onto one of its many Web Sites, like "The Dilbert Zone," the DoubleClick Network records into its private database whatever information it can get about its new shopper: the zip code, area code, business address, even the type of computer the consumer is using. At the same time, DoubleClick can also start collecting information about action the consumer ta kes online (Is 62). For example, if I am a student who likes baseball, I might start seeing on-line ads and offers, receiving e-mail solicitations for the newest state-of -the -art baseball equipment. All I have to do is take advantage of this easy and convenient way to shop, is to fill out a detailed personal questionnaire about myself, so that DoubleClick can target through the Internet. This is customized service for me, the consumer, so I fill out the information which will include my name, address , credit card number, hobbies and interests. Automatically, I have results, as online ads for goods and services, accompanied by order forms, appear on my screen.